Culture Heritage Learning

Tag Archives: Kite Aerial Photography

Here’s the final update on the partnership work with Mrs. Dalgleish’s wonderful Primary 5 class, at Law Primary School in East Lothian. After bated breath, the wind got up enough strength allowing us to complete our exploration of aerial photography. The sun shone, we went outdoors & finally flew the kite aerial photography kit. See how we fared by browsing through the gallery below.

Yes, we did it:)

Law Primary School

Preparing for lift off

Looking across to the Bass Rock

Primary 5

Look!

Up, up & away!

The school before extension 2015

Aerial photography in action

Exploring local aerial photography on Scran

Online Research

My house, in 1974

Mapping Archives to Aerials

Sharing our findings

The Exhibition

Looking for visual clues

Creative Writing

“Shoarmonger”

Biopoems

During an InSET session yesterday Law Primary School staff had a presentation detailing the full project. It was agreed that the class had achieved their learning intentions & much more besides.

Scran will be working closely with the P5 class at Law Primary Schoolin North Berwickthroughout next week. Together we will be examining lots of local content and weaving what we find into our learning journeys.

As well as being digital, weather permitting, we’ll be taking to the skies with our camera & K.A.P. kit. So please, fingers crossed for fair weather over East Lothian.

Many of the resources we will use in class come from East Lothian Museums Service who are contributors to the collections on Scran. For example, this rather quaint souvenir is leather bound and originally contained 15 black & white photographs with tinted skies. It was published by Valentine of Dundee around 1895, so it gives us a clue as to how long people have been visiting the beautiful seaside at North Berwick.

What more will our Primary 5 digital detectives be able to discover about where they live? We’ll be looking at lots of aerial imagery, considering how the town has changed and expanded over time. We’ll think about traits & trades which may have remained the same and finally, when we reach the end of our collaborative investigations, we will share our findings – so tenterhooks until then.

Recently we’ve been getting to grips with the kite aerial photography kits provided by Dr. John Wells of the Scottish National Aerial Photography Scheme (SNAPS). As you can see we visited Tantallon Castlefor a practice flight. We were quite pleased with our results & the potential for learning.

We are planning on piloting this activity with schools over 2015/16, so if you are interested please contact us& lets’s go fly a kite!

We believe exploring the aerial photography collections on Scran, in combination with the active learning involved in kite aerial photography, could lead to all sorts of creative learning.

For example, studying aerial photography can support the following Curriculum for Excellence experiences & outcomes within Social Studies.

describe the major characteristic features of Scotland’s landscape and explain how these were formed (SOC 2-07a)

discuss the environmental impact of human activity (SOC 2-08a)

explain how the physical environment influences the ways in which people use land by comparing the local area with a contrasting area (SOC 2-13a)

use knowledge of a historical period to interpret the evidence and present an informed view (SOC 3-01a)

Hot off the press, the Scranaloguehas arrived. We are delighted to share what’s happening at Scran via our brand new blog. Keep up to date with new content arriving in our many collections, for example we’ve some great new oral histories about Falkirk during World War One.

On Scran there is a staggering amount of aerial imageryto explore & have fun with. Aerial photographs are simply pictures taken from above. There are two types of aerial photograph – vertical and oblique.

Vertical aerial photographs are taken with a camera directed straight down towards the ground, as vertically as possible, at a right angle or 90 degrees. They are usually taken from immediately overhead with a camera fixed to the underside of an aeroplane. Such vertical aerial photographs are often easy to compare with maps and can help develop mapping skills.

Oblique aerial photographs are taken at angles less than 90 degrees to the ground and are usually taken by a photographer through the window of an aeroplane. This oblique perspective allows us to see more familiar view of the landscape, where details of urban and rural land-use become obvious.

Landscapes, buildings & architecture and our whole environment and history can be appreciated in new ways by examining aerial photographs. For example, have a look at these very different aerial pictures of Clachnaharry, near Inverness.

However, you don’t need an aeroplane to take aerial photos, another option is Kite Aerial Photography, which is a great outdoor learning experience. Aerial photographs can be used to illustrate various aspects of the curriculum, including Learning for Sustainability themes. Perfect for studying geography; aerial imagery can help answer questions about coastal activity, population density, economic activity, glaciers, commercial development, tourism and climate. Not to mention visual arts, archaeology, geology and various interdisciplinary approaches.

We hope you are able take the time to look at Scotland from a bird’s eye view on Scran.